Six Nations Rugby Championships 2019

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Also you don`t know which anti-rugby idea Italy will throw up. Maybe they will find something in the rule book which will allow rugby to be played as American Football.

On 3/6/2017, 6:18:59, RenegadeFurther said:

Have you seen how bad Italy are. Their only hope of a victory is messing around with the rule book.

On 3/6/2017, 7:14:42, RenegadeFurther said:

Italy are shocking and an embarrassment to the 6 nations.

Let it go, Renny, just let it go. Everybody else has moved on, including the winning England team, their fans and their coach. I'm starting to wonder that you just despise Italians in general. Come on, pasta is better than haggis, right?

Just one last nail in the coffin over that clever Italy plan devised by Conor O'Shea and his defensive coach Brendan Venter, and then we'll finally put it to rest: Did you know that one of the Scottish players found the whole Italy vs. England affair quite funny. Scotland hooker Ross Ford said, “It was interesting.” Ford, who is actually accustomed to the tactic, went on to say, “I didn't know what the hoo-hah was all about, because there have been teams who have done it before. There's nothing wrong with it, it's just a way of disrupting a team's flow, but if you do it you leave yourself exposed."

So, let's put it behind us and see what other interesting events are in store for the remainder of the tournament.

Anyway, England has a target in their sights for this Saturday's Calcutta Cup against Scotland: To match the international 18-game winning streak currently boasted by the New Zealand All Blacks - a record for a top tier nation since the era of professional rugby began. And England can break that record with 19 wins when they take on Ireland on March 18th, moving them up from 91.02 points in the world rankings to just under 94.78 currently held by the world's number one team, New Zealand.

Something else now. Is this a sneaky tactic England just used? "Accidentally" exposing their team player positions to the media, or was it really a goof-up?

Didn't something like this happen during the 2015 Rugby World Cup? Oh, yes. It was Wallaby head coach Michael Cheika and his forwards coach Mario Ledesma accidentally exposing their game plan against the All Blacks before the final. It included notes on how to “expose” wingers Julian Savea and Nehe Milner-Skudder and "rattle” the No. 8 Kieran Read from kick-offs.

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Ok I really thought I had read that a minimum stadium size was necessary. My son is 22 month old, let's call this trial by fire. At least I don't need a ticket for him.

Was the atmosphere at the game a normal rugby kind or more... agitated?

It was very friendly, definitely not agitated. The biggest problem was finding your seat at Flaminio - they have a strange seat-numbering system that confused everyone. Hope you have fun. The atmosphere in Rome generally was always really nice - not too busy, yet full of rugby supporters (in a good way). We bumped into some friends at the Coliseum, and the Italian rugby team was there too.

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Does anyone apart from me think that Scotland can beat England on Saturday ?

I do. But only if Vern Cotter and his coaching staff use a little-known law in the upcoming game. I can just see it now: Eddie Jones screaming about how unfair and ungentlemanly Scotland played in the Calcutta Cup this weekend.

Jones: "Scotland did not play the way other teams play: with fairness and respect! They used an old law that should be thrown out of the rule book and Scotland SHOULD BE BANNED FROM THE 6 NATIONS IMMEDIATELY!!!111ONEONE"

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Off-topic, but check this out if one wants to see a more exciting tournament. Hopefully the video, taken from Sky Sports, is still on YouTube. This game between the Crusaders and the Highlanders really gets going after an injury delay in the first few minutes. The comeback towards the end is incredible (video ends immediately after the last try). This classic rivalry between the two Super Rugby giants was played last week in Round 2 of the NZ Conference.

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Off-topic, but check this out if one wants to see a more exciting tournament. Hopefully the video, taken from Sky Sports, is still on YouTube. This game between the Crusaders and the Highlanders really gets going after an injury delay in the first few minutes. The comeback towards the end is incredible (video ends immediately after the last try). This classic rivalry between the two Super Rugby giants was played last week in Round 2 of the NZ Conference.

Crusaders, my home team. Most successful Super team..although we haven't won a title for a while now. That was a great game against the Highlanders.

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Thirty-five turnovers and dead bodies all over the field throughout (the injuries just stacked up). I've rarely seen any flashes of excellence from All Black winger Waisake Naholo, but in this game he was a class act.

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Crusaders, my home team. Most successful Super team..although we haven't won a title for a while now. That was a great game against the Highlanders.

As you probably know, @Kiwistylz, while the Super Rugby tournament is broadcast in more than forty countries (here on ESPN3), there's a major issue regarding the competition format. A lot of discussions going on within SANZAAR about a major revamp with the structure, especially since Japan's Sunwolves and Argentina's Jaguares came on board. The organizers had better sort out a new format before next season, otherwise Super Rugby will collapse.

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Just one last nail in the coffin over that clever Italy plan devised by Conor O'Shea and his defensive coach Brendan Venter, and then we'll finally put it to rest:

Just one think regarding your admiration for the clever Italian plan. You do realise that the Italians trained all week for this plan only to find out the day before the match that they were not allowed to tackle the scrum half. Absolutely brilliant thinking and there plan effectively going out the window. The Italians also didn`t know the rules had changed and not being able to tackle the scrum half turned their plan into a farce.

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Just one think [sic] regarding your admiration for the clever Italian plan. You do realise that the Italians trained all week for this plan only to find out the day before the match that they were not allowed to tackle the scrum half. Absolutely brilliant thinking and there [sic] plan effectively going out the window. The Italians also didn't know the rules had changed and not being able to tackle the scrum half turned their plan into a farce.

It didn't go out the window at all. They played the tactic, albeit without tackling the scrum half. As you said yourself, this wasn't allowed despite Italy training all week on this ploy. What they were left with was still enough to throw the English off their momentum during the breakdown phase, even though England ultimately won. Romain Poite certainly had no issues when he refereed the game.

And the incident was hardly farcical. Remember what coach O'Shea said after the foolish comments from Eddie Jones and former England scrum half Matt Dawson? O'Shea warned that immediately changing the law was a "knee-jerk reaction," and he went on to say it's likely the law will be changed at a later date as "laws often are." So Jones's idea of refunding the crowd their money after that game is itself farcical as much as him saying he'll immediately retire from the game because this bold play used by Italy will "cease to be rugby." Silly snowflake. Just like Donald Trump (Eddie Jones Wants to be the Big Man Like Donald Trump). He wanted to keep with the staid, typical style of rugby that can make the more adventurous fans of the game yawn.

Here's O'Shea's comment when he pointed out that Super Rugby teams have occasionally used the move: "When they do it, it's brilliant, it's tactical genius; when Italy do it, it's 'why are they doing that?'"

In fact, former Chiefs coach Wayne Smith had this to say: "It's a roll of the dice in many ways. There's an obvious weakness in that you can pull out of the tackle and put no-one else in, but it's hard to avoid them pulling you in. So if someone over the ball grabs hold of you, all of a sudden the ruck has been formed and the defensive line has to go back." In other words, England were so baffled by the cunning move by Italy that they never saw the opportunity to scuttle the maneuver by pulling any Italian players into the tackle. What a farce, England!

And then there's this from the world's number one referee, Nigel Owens: "James Haskell asked the question what is a ruck, and he doesn't know what it is? I am surprised at players not knowing this because international referees tend to go in with their respective national squads and discuss stuff like this.”

At the end of the day, Italy may end up with the Wooden Spoon once again, while that controversial law will either be amended or removed entirely before the next RBS Six Nations next year (which may include Romania and Georgia). And we'll all feel a lot more relaxed with no stress on our hearts. In the meantime, I need another nail for that coffin, Mr. Further. Care to spare me one? (Or you can always put me on ignore. There's a basket of deplorables on TT's international forum threads who are doing so.That's because I keep calling them out on their erroneous information and unyielding support of the alt-right movement. Boom!)

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Call me a 'stick-in-the-mud' but I preferred rugby union when it still had amateur status. The tactics employed by Italy would never have been used in those days. Professionalism turns sport into a business, the result becomes all that matters...